The Descendants

Special Matinee Engagement – The Descendants – 1:45pm daily through March 29th

Luckily for you fans of the Alexander Payne/Oscar-winning Hawaiian family drama, THE DESCENDANTS, will now be playing a special matinee engagement at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax. The Descendants screens daily at 1:45pm and this is your last chance to see one of the big hits that screened at the Big Night red carpet presentation at the 34th Starz Denver Film Festival last November.

The new vehicle for superstar George Clooney is this Alexander Payne comedy-drama about an aristocratic yet troubled American family in Hawaii. Clooney's uncertain Matt King faces a series of crises when his wife is injured in a boating accident off Waikiki and he stumbles in his attempts to mend fences with his two daughters, ages 10 and 17. To make matters worse, King learns that his wife was in the middle of a romantic fling at the time of her accident: he sets off, with the two girls in tow, on a crazy search for the wife's lover. “My friends on the mainland think because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise,” the distraught husband and father laments. “We're all just out here drinking mai tais, shaking our hips, and catching waves. Are they nuts?”

Adapted from a first novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, the film provides the opportunity for director Payne—the cinematic bard of Omaha, Nebraska—to plumb the depths of another imperfect striver who cannot understand his own folly. Thus does Clooney join the ranks of Election’s Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon as a delusional high-school teacher and his student nemesis, respectively; Jack Nicholson's baffled retiree in About Schmidt; and the disgruntled wine snob whom Paul Giamatti played to raves in Sideways.

The supporting cast features Amara Miller as the precocious younger daughter, Scottie; Shailene Woodley as the rebellious teenager, Alexandra; and a group of solid Hollywood veterans, including Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, and Matthew Lillard.—BILL GALLO